Pirate Wires - Trump’s America (ft. Bridget Phetasy) Executive Orders, Pardons, DEI & More!

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

EP#84: The inauguration mega pod! The “Golden Age” of America begins as Trump was inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. We get into everything from the executive orders, to the the pardons, the tech ‘oligarchy’, optimism in the country, AI, DEI, Elon’s hand gesture on stage, Tiktok and more. Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Riley Nork, Bridget Phetasy, Molly O'Shea We have partnered with Polymarket! Download the Polymarket: Election Forecast app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/polymarket-election-forecast/id6648798962 - Disclaimer: Not Financial Advice, For Entertainment Purposes Only. Sign Up For The Pirate Wires Daily!  https://get.piratewires.com/pw/daily Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/why-trump-brought-tiktok-back-to-life?f=home https://www.piratewires.com/p/what-the-tech-right-sees-in-trump?f=home Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell Riley Twitter: https://x.com/rylzdigital Bridget Twitter: https://x.com/BridgetPhetasy Molly Twitter: https://x.com/MollySOShea TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod! Welcome Back Bridget Phetasy  2:30 - Trump Inauguration - Executive Orders, Pardons, & Vibe Shift 22:00 - What Will Trump Do Next? - SPONSORED BY POLYMARKET 23:20 - DEI Is Over 38:45 - Biden Pardons 50:45 - The New Tech Oligarchy 1:13:00 - TikTok Is Back 1:24:40 - Elon Musk's "Hand Gesture" 1:35:30 - Final Observations, Zuck's Wandering Eyes & memes 1:40:00 - Thanks For Watching! Like & Subscribe  #podcast #politics #trump #technology #culture

The golden age of America begins right now. It like feels kind of fake to me right now. Everybody wants to be optimistic. It's nice to feel that way after years of having a man with no brain. You feel me? No fighting forever, bro. Thank Obama for everything that he said for me, bro. I'm starting to think you're right.

The law is fake. Yeah, the law is fake. Wizards casting spells from spell books, if you see something, say something. If you see some DEI, you call up Don. You call up daddy Don. What did you think about Elon's salute? What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod. We've got, first of all, a really beefy pod, but second, a couple of guests in the house today.

We've got Molly showing up for the finals of Pirate Idol in the house today. This is week three. Next week is our last one. Hi, Molly. And special guest, not really a judge. We're not judging this week, but while we're judging, we're judging, just not Molly. There'll be a lot of judging.

And it's Bridget in the house. Thank you for joining us again. Thank you for having me. Plug, Bridget, plug your show for our audience before we move on. Yeah, go to Fetasy YouTube and just subscribe. It's a dumpster, dumpster fire. You know, we've been commenting on the dumpster fire

for five and a half years now, so. And it is flaming at the moment. So, a lot to discuss today. I also, I'm gonna do a little plug myself. You guys, if you're not checking out or if you're not subscribed to the PirateWires Daily for free, you should do that. Lands in your inbox every day, three takes on the news. From the whole PirateWires team, it's how you're not subscribed to the PirateWires daily for free, you should do that. Land in your inbox every day. Three takes on the news from the whole PirateWires team. It's how you're going to keep up with us. And a lot of the stuff that we're talking

about on this pod, we touch on there first and it's more expansive and expanded way here when there's good content out there. And there's just a lot of good content. There's really been a lot of good content since Trump's inauguration, which is, oh, last one, Ops Hire. If you guys want to join Pyrewire as a team member and you have some ops proficiency, hit me up. I need to write him in. This is just a regular director of ops job and you'll be in charge of basically everything that's not creative because I want to get as much of that off of my plate as possible so I can focus on product development and also writing, speaking, things like this.

Great. Amazing. Love it. Moving on. Trump's inauguration. Topic number one, Riley, break it down for us. Yeah, this is a beefy one. So the fascist regime is upon us, everybody.

Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president this week, the first since Glover Cleveland to be elected in two non-consecutive terms. The inauguration itself was moved inside the Capitol Rotunda for the first time in 40 years because it was like five degrees in DC. Although given some of Trump's close calls with assassins on rooftops, probably for the best. In his inauguration speech, Trump pledged a new golden age for America. I have heard the phrase golden age probably 500 times this week. That's how you know that's

good branding. That's just a good job. And right away, Trump the showman got to work signing executive orders in the middle of an arena. After his inauguration, I think all federal policies should be enacted via nationwide arena tour from this point forward. But the orders were very wide reaching too, so I will just go over some of the highlights. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, yes. 1500 January 6 prisoners receiving a complete pardon, elimination of birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants, shutting down offices and programs related to DEI, which we'll get into more later on.

Labeling Mexican cartels, terrorist organizations, and also pardoning Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. A lot of these are already facing court challenges. And you of course have the lefty freak out about Trump being a dictator signing these orders. But as Kevin pointed out in the Daily This Week, shout out Kevin. If executive orders are fascism, our nation has been fascist for a long time. Obama famously governed by quote, pen and phone. Hell, FDR enacted a whopping 3721 EOs during his

12 years in office. So yeah, I guess which one of Trump's fascist executive orders do you guys want to dive into first? Well, compared, that was compared to just a, I guess which one of Trump's fascist executive orders do you guys want to dive into first? Well, compared, that was compared to just a, I think a couple hundred or a few hundred during Trump's first term. So that's an important distinction. I think he'll be doing a lot more of them now. I was asking about just today, I hit up the chat and I was asking about the immigration

stuff. I was like, what is even, what's even possible here? Like what is going on? And specifically it had to do with the border and asylum being declared at the border. And I was like, can you just get rid of that? And Kevin wrote, yeah, so he's drawing on the immigration and nationality act from 1952 and a court case, Trump versus Hawaii, and claiming he can do basically whatever he wants. And then he gets deep in the weeds here on the actual law that's being drawn upon, which just said to me,

how crazy different this Trump opening is from the last one. He is so prepared. Like they, I think it's been six months in an army of lawyers. These are not just, it's not just him, you know, tweeting random shit. He's had a lot of people working on this and he's come in with a lot of energy,

and there's already momentum, and it is definitely his strategy. It's this, like, you know, shock and awe strategy, which has been interesting to watch. We haven't seen something like this that is also being, I think, received popularly, reasonably well. The inauguration weekend felt to me like Barack Obama.

It felt like Obama in 2008. I haven't seen anything like this since then. And I actually forgot what that was like when the nation was just freaking out and actually just excited. And there was this energy. You didn't get that for Trump when he won the first time because people were on the left, I think, genuinely terrified and didn't understand

what had even happened. When it was Biden, obviously, Trump was like, you didn't win, and there was just January 6th. And so there was no celebration. And now here we are. And obviously, you didn't have that for Obama's second term either. So it's been a long, long time since we've seen this. And I...

Yeah, I guess... I'm excited for some of these executive orders, to be honest, and I liked the whole concept of him... It was evocative, I will say. With him on a stage, at a desk, signing orders, it was, it was... Now, I'm saying I'm excited, I'm about to say it was giving Hunger Games.

I don't know what that says. I don't know what that says about me, but that it's, it felt like Hunger Games and also I was ready for it. It's been a rough four years. Bridget, what do you think? I mean, a couple of things. I think it is miraculous how Democrats have rediscovered the border again, suddenly they're like, remember that it existed after four years of just pretending that it didn't. And now suddenly there's, you know, what are we gonna do? And you didn't do anything for four years and now here we are.

So it does seem like it's popular. The, you know, Fox had that big, they were embedded in Boston, which is also funny to me. Of course they'd go to Boston where like no one cares. They're like, yeah, we'll start this in Boston, the raids and they're making a point to have it be these dangerous criminals. And I think it's something like 66% of Americans, according to a poll, are an approval of this. So this is, for the most part part popular. And it does, as you were talking about, seem like this realignment is so wild. As you mentioned, nothing really like it like

Obama, but the mainstream has shifted so crazily to, I mean, what a drastic change from 2016 to now, where it's like everybody who is anybody was in DC and on the dais with him and people, like I was saying on Twitter, I'm like, you know, six months ago, a lot of these people wouldn't even be caught dead on stage with Trump. And now you have Oscar de la Renta, you know, in the house and designing, doing all the fashion for the women. And it's wild to see, like I've been saying, the right is cool. Like they're the cool kids suddenly in that kind of Obama-esque way. And that is, I don't think like the Democrats have ever,

in my lifetime, they've never been cool. Even if they lost an election, they were still like the dominant cool kids in America. And that reversal is really something to behold. TITO They have no idea what to do with it. And we saw that in the reporting. They don't know. You see them in the woods lost and confused. And they're reporting on things like the podcasting stuff. And they're like, oh, the bros have a line to take over. And they're reading it like it's a plot. Like, there was this like secret meeting.

And it was Theo Vonn sitting down with Joe Rogan. And they have cloaks on. And they're like, how do we get them? How do we like, how do we elect Donald Trump and like make a right wing fascist America? And it's like, actually what happened is you guys were so tedious and obnoxious and joyless that everybody with sense left.

And that, I think now that side, like who even are those people I just mentioned and what do they have in common with Trump and what do they have in common with Elon Musk and whatever? I think that it's complicated and probably not as much as it seems. It's just what they're all not is like joyless scolds on the left. But not even joyless scolds, common sense. Like so many of these executive orders are just common sense.

And so you are seeing this reversion to what I think the average normie American considered common sense and they went completely out of their minds for a decade and just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. And you also at the same time, we're telling everybody who push back even within your party and said, hey guys, maybe men and women still are different. And then you're like bigot fascist, you're out. So it is also scolds, but also just you literally went crazy. You mentioned one of them a moment ago that I would like to

double click on, which is the raids in Boston and Matt, if you could play that clip. I'm not going back to Haiti. One of those threats is this illegal alien from Haiti. ICE says he's a gang member with 17 criminal convictions in recent years. You feel me? Yo, Biden forever, bro. Thank Obama for everything that he said for me, bro.

ICE Boston quickly takes down its next targets, including this illegal alien from Brazil who has an Interpol red notice for armed robbery. So I saw that video just this morning. I mean, it opens with the Haitian dude with the seven felonies or whatever it was. And then it moves on to like a handful of other migrants, all like aggressive rap sheets, tons of crime.

I thought like, who could possibly defend these people? Like, how could you possibly defend the idea of not deporting them? Which is all that's happening right now, is like, you have a violent criminal who has entered the country illegally. We're not even... You can't even say it's like a social justice thing where it's like,

well, I... They're not getting a fair trial. There's no trial at all. You don't fucking belong here. You're going home now, and you can do crime there if you want. We're not even stopping you from doing crime. You just can't do it here. I'm not going back to Haiti. Well, he's wrong. He's going back to Haiti. -♪ H-O-R-D, H-O-R-D, H-O-R-D... -♪

To go back to your common sense thing, Bridget, that's how it felt for me for most of these as well. And for this one, for the immigration ones, specifically, even the one that's really controversial, I was listening to the Caris Wishers podcast podcast was Scott Galway. We'll get to it a little bit later in the podcast. Um, but they said one thing I want to address now, uh, Scott, who was more reasonable of the two seemed really down about birthright citizenship. And um, and that's the one that people tend to focus on the idea that if someone comes

over here who's illegal and then they have a kid, that kid should be an immigrant. I understand where you're coming from. However, it's not crazy to say that that shouldn't happen. In fact, that's the law, like, in most of the rest of the world. I cannot go to France and have a child with an American and that child be French. That doesn't, that's not the way it works almost anywhere else. And I think there's a good reason for that.

And rather than just like freak out and cry and scream about it, I think it's worth stepping back and looking at the broader context and, and asking yourself about some of these things like, well, well, what are the problems of maybe having two illegal immigrant parents and then a child who automatically becomes an American rather than wherever their parents are from? Like, what does that mean for society? Like what even is an American at this point? Like, if they didn't... What happens if you could, if everyone knows you can do that? Like, talk about an incentive to come here and do it.

If you know that that's happening, obviously you're incentivizing it. I think it doesn't pass, that law does not pass the common sense sniff test to me. I think it's worth having a discussion about that. Um, yeah, that was the one, that was the one for me where I thought like, thank God this is happening. Like, this is actually, this is what I wanted to have. This is what I hoped would happen.

His violent criminals would just be deported. I'm glad. I agree. A lot of the executive orders were common sense. One that might be controversial though, another one is the January 6th pardons. So he didn't just pardon like some of the people milling around outside the Capitol, which it's insane they even face lawfare to begin with. But it's a blanket pardon.

I think some were granted clemency and said we might look at their cases later. But I think there was this perception floating around that the vibe shift towards Trump wasn't necessarily as real. Some people made it out to be and it was just Trump who moderated on some of his positions. And I think that that January 6 pardon shows that that sort of isn't the case. And Trump really hasn't changed.

He pardoned the QAnon shaman, the guy who stole Nancy Pelosi's lectern. Trump is still Trump. And I think the fact that so many people in Silicon Valley have shifted towards that, and in the culture in general, have shifted towards Trump there really shows how far we've come in the last like five years. I didn't care about January 6 then and I don't care about it now. I remember watching it and they started the insurrection language in real time. Like live they were mentioning insurrection, they were mentioning coup. And I remember

immediately thinking I was happy Biden won too at the time. And I remember thinking like this is such a fucking joke. This is not an insurrection. It's not a coup. Those are two words that have meanings and the meaning is not, you know, like here in these, in this, but I do think, I don't know. I think that there was definitely criminality. I mean, rioters should be prosecuted. I don't know the extent to which these guys were prosecuted. It sounds like there was some unfair prosecution and lawfare, but like some of these guys at the Capitol were violent. They like violently entered the Capitol and they should be, they shouldn't do that. That shouldn't happen in our Capitol. So, um, I don't know if they, if every one of them

deserved pardons, but I'm sure that granny, like that was like walking through the rotunda or whatever. She should have been there. I don't think that happened. I don't think, I think that was fake news. I don't think she was actually there. That wasn't a picture from the, from January 6th. I believe I could be wrong. Uh, you know, we'll be fact-checked in the comments, I'm sure, but I don't believe that granny was ever actually. That's my whole be wrong. Uh, you know, we'll be fact-checked in the comments, I'm sure, but I don't believe that granny was ever actually. That's my whole model for the answer. I know. There's a lot of fake news out there, man. You gotta be careful with the fakes. For me, it was always, they were rides. I've been very clear about this.

I feel about riders like kind of across the board the same way. I just want them to be treated the same way. I don't think that you should be able to seize four blocks of Capitol Hill in Seattle for what? A couple of months and like take over a police department and nothing happens to you. Meanwhile, someone who just walked through the Capitol is still in prison until Trump pardoned him, which is a case that I just read about today on X, that JD Vance co-signed.

That is messed up. Like the scale is clearly off there. And it's also a little bit frightening. It felt to me like a demonstration of power. It felt like maybe the sort of state left was really afraid of some kind of coup type situation, like really actually happening for some reason. And so they wanted to make a real show of strength. And then they acted in the way that they, sort of doing the things that they said they were actually afraid of, in my opinion. Like I saw that and I'm like, man,

like these people are really, they're capable of anything. Like I don't really trust the government at all, not to come for political dissidents. And then they kind of proved that out with Trump, in my opinion. I think, yeah, I think maybe there's a scale thing too, in terms of the punishment that I would feel. So the Seattle rioters, like I wouldn't want them in a federal

penitentiary for two years for just. For just, I don't know, breaking into a building or something, or even lighting a fire. Uh, maybe arson is pretty bad, but like, I think that like for, for some of these things, like there should be a punishment and it should be flogging and two years in a federal penitentiary does not, that seems excessive to me. I think it's for the most part probably fine that they're out. Maybe the executive order stuff is kind of weird. How do you guys feel about,

like I don't fully understand these things. I don't, I always realized that because Biden was doing a lot of executive orders as well and Biden left, Biden left office creating a new constitutional amendment. Like really just via tweet. He was just like, okay, this is now an amendment. And no one weirdly took that. Like, it seems like everyone has ignored that. Like the left press was just like, we're not touching that. Everyone's pretending it didn't happen, but it definitely happened.

He definitely said that. And we all just kind of agreed not to pay attention to it. Um, and that is what a lot of this feels like to me. It's like people just say stuff, and then other people say stuff. And then you go to these like professional people who say stuff, which are judges, and they consult with people who said stuff

years and years and years ago, but there are no real answers to anything. It's just like people saying stuff, and then somehow somehow stuff happens. And I don't understand it. Like at a fundamental level, law to me seems, it like feels kind of fake to me right now. And with Trump signing this shit and some of the laws seem to be happening automatically. It seems like a bunch of DEI people have been fired, which we're going to talk about in a minute, the DEI smakes EO specifically. It seems like, you know, ICE is all activated. Like, I don't know...

It seems like stuff is just happening, and it just comes down to people agreeing, like, okay, sure, the president has these powers, and it is what it is. Moving on. On magical law, do you agree with me? Am I wrong? Like, does this feel legitimate to you? It feels fake to me. Fakila. Because I think some of these will be challenged in court.

Well, I think everything is gonna be challenged in court. I think that the next four years will just be a, it will be, everything will be court. It'll be Trump saying, here's what I'm doing. And it will be court saying you can and other lawyers saying, yes, we can. And it's just gonna be a battle of lawyers from, from top to star. But what I'm saying is like, that feels it just like every, every court case is just resting on some other court case. And it just, I guess I just, after the last four years, and now leading into this one and really like the last eight years of what I would call sort of living in the clown world,

I feel kind of unstuck from what I used to think of as very permanent. You're unburdened by what has been. Yeah, I am. What has been was like, we're like the concept of a country that is real. Like, everything to me feels a little bit fake right now. And I'm trying to get my, maybe my legs back

and feel like I'm standing on solid ground again. I just don't trust, I don't know, almost anything. I think most of this does have to go to the shock value. Like, we came from a really great period of stagnation and organizational bloat. Like, Trump saw what other countries were doing, and like, I'd say he pulled like a super-Mallet,

like, just tacked everything together, and just like him ripping things off of a whiteboard. He was like, Nope, I'm going to sign this in an arena. All these things are going to get like enacted. We'll see what happens and then go from there. But I think it was obviously like a very big shock value, like starting strong. This is how we want to be perceived as America, like, I'm gonna lay the hammer down, kind of a thing. And I don't, like you, I don't know what to believe or not believe, but I think if anything else,

it's just a big statement on how he wants to be perceived. BOWEN It's interesting that he sort of got to do it twice. They, in the sort of states, terror or fear of and hatred of Trump, they, they really threw everything they could at him to stop him from a second term. But that worked in his favor because he just got, he got four years off to think and to go back over what he did and what he would have done differently with it with another term. And, and now you brought up Millay, I think that's a great comparison. He is doing a lot like he had all of this, he had time to pause, to reflect, to look at what other

leaders are doing in other places that are even more bloated and stagnant than America, to reflect on what he could do here to bring new people in who are completely loyal to him. And now I think that the people who were most afraid of him and did everything they could to stop that second term are I think probably regretting it because have they not had they just well, I guess there's a question here of whether or not he won the last election that I'm sort of dipping my toes into right now. Let's table that. I want to talk PolyMarket really quick. PolyMarket, thanks for supporting this podcast, for being a sponsor of the Whether or Not Donald Trump Won the Election podcast.

Thank you PolyMarket, this is a paid partnership. You guys are supporting amazing journalism here at PirateWires, if I do say so myself, with Trump officially back in office, returning to PolyMarket to see what's likely on the horizon in the coming months. So not just executive orders, but law. Here's where things stand today according to the market, the betting markets. Tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

There's a 69% chance Trump imposes 25% tariffs on Canada before March, while Mexico's odds are even higher at 79%. And I think that she earned, it was that make America Mexicana hat, man. Like she really was asking for it. Federal income tax, an 8% chance that federal income tax is abolished in 2025, which was another crazy one that my friend Ryan hit me up with yesterday.

Apparently Trump is floating the idea of abolishing this for real. It's interesting to see all of these things that he randomly said on the campaign trail that I thought I would never hear again. And he's like, no, actually I'm to try and do that. I'm like, all right, well, go off, King. If you can abolish federal income tax, I don't it'll see it's gonna be very hard for people to be mad at you. Trump has floated the idea that revenue

from foreign tariffs could offset the loss. I don't know how that's possible, but I'm I'm willing to believe if it means that I don't have to pay federal income tax, go for it, man. I know. So this is one of the EOs, executive orders was the abolition of DEI at the federal level. I have a lot to say about here to some Axios reporting I want to talk about, but I know Bridget, you've been on this stuff for a long time and I'm sure that this one warmed your heart. Why don't you tell me how you feel?

Tell me what's going on in the world of DEI and the government? What are you seeing out there on the internet? I mean, people? It's weird. The muted response from it is telling to me that people, or even people who might be like of the left, they're like, oh, thank God, I don't have to go to my white privilege course anymore or whatever they were subjected to. Because I think as the federal man pushes this out, corporations are going to be allowed to follow and make their own decisions about this. So it sets the tone for what everybody can do.

It has been many... It's always sounded very creepy and Orwellian to me, even the name. It's like diversity, equity, inclusion. You feel like you're gonna hear it over a microphone and you're gonna have to go report to your diversity, equity, inclusion person. And this is just a bloated sector of society that was created by all these people

who went and got these ridiculous degrees and had nothing to do with them. They just created this whole DEI economy, which is millions and billions of dollars, but it does absolutely nothing and also hinders actual progress. People are walking around on eggshells. I think most people are pretty happy about this change. So I think people... Yeah, I think they have to be generally happy about this. But I saw some Axios reporting that said they were not. Which I do want to break down because I think it's...

I mean, I think they're wrong. And I think that the way they framed this is pretty insidious, but it's an important look in the way the media works. So, the backbone of it, or let's say the foundation of the story they're telling is their own poll on how Americans think about DEI. And they go in here, and the things that they prove is that like, okay, so most Americans don't think that it hurt them. Most Americans think it's just like kind of like a performative thing.

They think it seems nice. What none of them say here though is that they're okay with race based hiring practices. Like that's not a question that was directly asked. And so I think it's very tricky when you're pulling people on how they feel about diversity, equity and inclusion after they've been raised in a society which is drilled into their head. You need to have diversity and if you don't, you're bad. They're gonna say like, it sounds nice. And like, yeah, diversity and equity inclusion programs

sounds nice. But if you ask those same people, the exact same people, how do you feel about race coming into a hiring decision? How do you feel about like, hey, we don't have enough black people here. We need to hire only black people. Or happened in tech, when there were layoffs, how do we keep our numbers diverse as we're laying people off? And the way that you do that is you disproportionately fire white nation people, these things have happened. And I know that this is not this is not an abstract question. This is we have an actual answer to this question. And it's not from a red state. It's from California, which when posed this question by ballot initiative, voted strongly against allowing the state to factor race into decisions

based on either government hiring or this was coming up in admissions. And the reason that is something that I recall just having covered California for a while. But then I went and looked and I found this stupid BBC article, or this NPR article, I'm sorry, same difference, really, at this point, discussing this thing, the admissions policy being struck down at this by this Supreme Court. They're like, we can look to California for how this shook out. And they're like, you know, it's a disaster. The diversity numbers, the diversity quotas could not be met once we couldn't use these

like illegal hiring practices, basing things on race. And it's just funny to see like, you know, what you consider to be a good goal. Like I don't consider that to be a good goal. I consider that to be quite like an evil goal. And I'm glad that it was abolished. I think that it should have been abolished. And I think that poll was fucking dastardly.

The reason that they did it was so that they could then do is say something like Trump is doing this very unpopular thing, which is go after DEI for some niche, like small minority activist cause, which is the abolition of DEI. And they had this one quote here, it builds on the anti-DEI activist pressures of recent years and could pave the way for a world

where the government prosecutes, not protects corporate diversity efforts. And it's like, yeah, dude, it's fucking illegal to fire or hire someone based on the color of their skin. And if you do that, you should not be protected by the government. You should absolutely be prosecuted. It's called a law and we have it and it should be followed.

Thoughts. I would love actually a pro DEI voice in here. Brandon, can you make the case? Why did you pick me? The funny is. That feels garbage. The one thing I did notice, it's not off topic, but it's not directly in response to your question, is that even people on the left now are turning against DEI. Bridget,

you said that the response has been muted. I noticed that this morning, yesterday, sorry, Ryan Graham tweeted, DEI was an active impediment to the project of building a multiracial working class movement capable of taking on corporate and oligarchic power. Rufa did the left a favor in nuking it. Oh yeah, I think that's true. If you guys don't know who Ryan Grim is, he's a very progressive journalist that's been,

I think he started at Huffington Post. He was there for nine years. He went over to The Intercept and he started his own website, wrote a book about the Democratic, the history of the progressive party. So, I don't know, it seems like Trump is on the right side of history here, even according to people on the left, maybe. What's shocking to me is actually, I was speaking to a very kind of old school liberal boomer relative, and he was like, what's DEI?

They don't even know what it is. They'll be voting for people who support this, but they don't really even know what it is because it does sound like this happy, happy, joy, joy thing. But the way I kind of explained it, I was like, well, would you prefer someone who is running air traffic control to be someone that knows what they're doing or someone that's meeting a quota? And they will always say the person who knows what they're doing, but DEI would instruct it to be the person to meet some quota. And they just don't understand that it was really the erasure of merit in so many ways.

And that has real world consequences, probably little ones and all the way up to catastrophic ones that are invisible and visible. You know, there's a long, it's good for any place where people are in charge of public safety should be the best people who are up to the task, not in, particularly when it comes to public safety, not, oh, how do we fill this racial quota? So we have, yes. And there's a question now of how you implement the,

I guess, the anti-DEI agenda, which is what we're seeing now. And so you have these people, they lost, and they're now being fired. Trump is firing literally all of, anyone with DEI in their name, in their title, at a federal, uh, in a federal program is being axed. And I just saw a woman online, um, there were screenshots. I think this, I forget which government program this was, tobacco.

Maybe there was a woman on the screenshot on their team page who was a diversity executive. She was like the chief diversity officer or something. She has now since changed that to just like a regular executive, like under whatever. And then you have people like right wing trolls online, like she changed her name, get her. And so there's this meme of the dude from,

what was that Nazi movie done by... Inglourious Bastards. Inglourious Bastards. It's like the Nazi meme where he's like... You're hiding DEI officers under your floorboards. It's like the Nazi meme where he's like, you know, the evil guy. You're hiding DEI officers under your floorboards, are you not? It's like that kind of energy. It is that. It is really that. And I mean, it is a little, I would be scary if I were a DEI person. We know for a fact, we have a source, we have a source in the government.

Ooh, a source. Who just had a friend lose her job because she was a DEI, it was in her title. It was like something DEI related. So it's definitely happening. I will say it gives like, there is something that the meme got me a little bit. I was like, this, it does feel a little bit witch-hunt-y.

Generally speaking right now. You see this also with... I don't know that we have time to talk about Sam and Elon in this podcast today, but in the way that everyone's like, finding old tweets of Sam's supporting Donald... Uh, not supporting Donald Trump, trying to stop Donald Trump, doing everything he could in 2016. They're like, you're a liar, like, you don't support him. Here you are saying this, like, find his old tweets.

Find everybody who didn't support Donald Trump enough until right now. And it's like, well, first of all, we're in tech, so that's basically everybody. That is like everybody other than Peter, who I work for, you all were not voting for Donald Trump. He was the only one, he was run out of town with fucking pitchforks.

Like, all of you were anti that, and some of you, I'm not going to forgive for the way, You all were not voting for Donald Trump. He was the only one who was run out of town with fucking pitchforks. Like, all of you were anti that, and some of you I'm not gonna forgive for the way... You can vote wherever you want, but the way that they treated Peter, I'll never forget as long as I live. It was heinous. It was an actual witch hunt. And it was like very, very, very crazy.

This feels like it's flavors of that. It's like, it's like, um, you better be... It's like this purity test or something. Yeah. And I don't like that. You know who did that? The left for the past eight years. Yeah. Yeah. It's, they have to be careful of that. You know, I think that there is this real sense of

wanting vengeance because there were people who lost their jobs, lost, they were treated horribly and many times, you many times there was violence threatened and so there is a very real sense of we're the winners, we're the victors and now we're going to extract revenge on all of our enemies and foes. And like you said, that kind of witchhunt-y vibe. But then there's also the other side of that was that

memo I was talking about that I thought it was a letter to I can't remember again the agency, but it was like, we know you're trying to hide and cover up these, these, these departments, and we see what you're doing, and we're not going to tolerate it. But then it kind of incentivizes people to come forward and like rat people out. I'm not just, I'm just not a fan of like rat out culture. Well, I think they asked about the rat. I think the government, yeah, the government's asked if you, if you see something, say something. If you see some DEI anywhere going on in this house, you call up Don, you call up daddy Don, and he's gonna lay down the hammer.

Just a freaking nation of narcs is what we're making. And then you have like the creepy AI spy where they're gonna build. It's just, there are some unsettling tones to this that I think people, you know, we're very much in the like, hooray, everybody wants to be optimistic. It's nice to feel that way after years of having a man with no brain be in charge of a massive country that was felt like it was going downhill.

But I think some people have to, it's good to notice some of the other. You don't want to become the thing that you just defeated and hate. Well, yeah, it could be really scary. Like four years from now. or you don't wanna become the thing that you just defeated and hate. Well, yeah, it could be really scary. Like four years from now, there are a lot of different, just like if Trump didn't win this election, okay? And Queen Coconut was now in charge. And it was like everyone was cuckoo for Kamala

and like the border was wide open and who the fuck knows? Like that's a different timeline. Now Trump's won. I think I really just do believe this is a better time. Like I'm seeing criminals be deported right now. And I'm like, this is fucking, this is some good shit. I can watch this like before I go to bed each night, like suing me and puts me in a peaceful state of mind.

Um, however, like the witch Bernie stuff starts to make me feel the purity tests. Um, however, like the witch Bernie stuff starts to make me feel the purity tests. Um, the, the question I like, I, the question of who is being targeted on the deportations means it matters a lot to me. How is this being conducted? Like, where are you starting? Who are you prioritizing? Is it just someone's grandma? Like, I don't want to see that. I, if you, that's an interesting conversation that we can have like years from now after you've gotten rid of everyone who just fucking got here, after all of the criminals who we know are actual criminals, convicted felons and things like this. Like, why are they still here? Like, let's just do all of that shit first. There are some dark timelines out there. Like, whenever you get a bunch of people gassed up on themselves and,

dark timelines out there. Like whenever you get a bunch of people gassed up on themselves and given a lot of power, which they seem to have, I mean, I'm always wondering like, where is the limit of anybody's power right now? It seems like anybody in office, Democrat or Republican, can just do whatever they want. And if enough people are like, yeah, you can, then it happens. And you see that in court cases and things like this, like the January 6 protesters. Like how did that guy who was just walking down the hall get slammed with gears in prison? It's like, it happens because people just... are kind of making this stuff up as they go.

And I don't want the darker timeline. I don't want to see this become everything that everyone said it would become on the sort of further extremes of the left. Like, I don't want to become their villain in reality. I would like to see just American, like, vigor again, and a border, and, like, a good economy. Like, pretty basic shit is what I want.

That's what I'm here for, and I don't want anything more than that. I don't want people strung up because they fucking voted for Kamala Harris, or worse, Hillary Clinton eight years ago. Like, who cares? It was a long time ago. A lot's happened. Yeah, I agree with you that there's... It's funny to watch everybody reconstruct reality in their minds now that they're either the winners or the losers. We see this, I guess,

every four years or every time the administration turns over. But you had everybody being like, this is a government in bed with big tech, you know, during the Biden years and like they're censoring us. And then you have Trump up there with all of big tech. And you're there's a part of me that's like, cool. Hopefully this is good. Cool. Hopefully this is good. It could be really bad. Yep. Let's talk about the oligarchy. The bro-ligarchy. The bro-ligarchy. I've got a lot to say about it,

but first I'm gonna combine two here. We have, as Biden was leaving, there was this trail of criminals that he pardoned from not just laws they committed, but any law they might've committed over the last decade. It was crazy. The concept of a preemptive pardon is still like, that's fucking bananas to me.

And it sort of gives way to Trump. Like that's the out with the old and in with the new. And it's Trump on a dais surrounded by the tech people who the right wing has hated for years. It is this total bizarre realignment. I mean, Trump is the felon, right? He's the criminal. He's the one who, four years ago,

every single MSNBC talking head was saying like, he's pardoning these people, it's criminal. He's going through a list after list after list. Trump never pardoned his family, but they were like, if he does, if he does pardon his family, this is the most vile thing we've ever seen. It was relentless. This is what Trump does. Trump never pardoned his family, but they were like, if he does, if he does pardon his family, this is the most vile thing we've ever seen.

It was relentless. This is what Trump does. So it's kind of like an inversion of the sides. It is like, really, the criminal becomes the king and the others are cast out as pardoned now felons. Riley, do you have anything there that you want to, that I missed in just teeing up the story and then I want to talk about both the pardons

and the burglagarky. Just that it is ironic that the party of, no one is above the law and the party of norms is like, so is pardoning. So just on the pardons, it was Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, former rep, Liz Cheney, as well as everyone else on the January 6th committee. And then like very select members of his family.

Like, so it was like, I think his brother, his sister-in-law, his brother-in-law. So just very weirdly specific members of his family. And then all of his allies like Fauci, it was just a very weird mishmash of people that he pardoned. That part feels important to me. The fact that it was not his entire... People said it was his whole family.

I think I even, in a take, when the story was coming together, was like, man, he pardoned his family. That was obfuscation. That was a smokescreen for what actually happened, which was a very, like you said, select group of people who definitely did something that I was not thinking about his brother-in-law ever until he pardoned him. But I was like, wait a minute, what the fuck did he do?

Like, what did that guy do? It reminded me of BLM when all the corporations were like, we're not racist. You're like, well, I'm starting to wonder if you guys were racist. I didn't wonder this. Well, they would say things too like, you know, we are, like everyone's racist.

And like, we have to like internally think back on what we've done and whatever. I'm like, I have to like internally think back on what we've done and whatever. I'm like, I don't have to think back on what I've done. What the fuck did you do? I didn't do it. Like I would love to know more though. Tell me, keep talking please. Coca Cola or whatever.

Like it's so weird. It did have, I just want to know any of you guys who are much smarter. Is there any precedent for preemptive pardon? Has it ever been done before? It's rare. Okay, so the concept of a preemptive pardon? Has it ever been done before? It's rare. Okay, so the concept of a preemptive pardon, granting a pardon before a person has been charged, tried, or convicted of a crime is rare,

but not unheard of. Particularly in the context of U.S. law, of course. Um, the first major historical instance, uh, was Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon on September 18th, 1974. That was the first one. That was theth, 1974. That was the first one. Um, that was the last one too. And then Biden's handed him out like fucking like gumballs from the gumball

machine, like Oprah Winfrey at her show. You get a pardon and you get a pardon. Like Bill's like, don't put this shit on me. I don't need a pardon, sir. Thought she's like, I do need one, thanks. Fouchy needs one, yeah. Fouchy perjured himself in front of everybody. And then Millay, um, not Millay,

clean Millay out of this, poor Millay. Millay's got a pardon. The general, what's his name? Millay. Very close, Millay. Was it, so he's the one that was talking about the orders he wasn't going to follow of Trumps, right? Yeah, that was his. And the January 6th committee

was, I think, something about shredding evidence. But yeah, that was what I think Millie's was. Cheney, I have no idea. I don't know what Liz did. Other than, I know why people don't like her. But I don't know what is like the potentially illegal thing. Did she do something with the January 6th committees? Yes, that was, yeah. She was the chairwoman. And I believe the allegation with them and everyone on the January 6 committees? Yeah, she was the chairwoman. And I believe the allegation with them

and everyone on the January 6 committee was they like illegally shredded evidence while they were doing the whole witch hunt of Trump. I think that's what it was. You know, we've heard for the last four years, if you do the crime, you have to pay the time, I think. Is that kind of roughly what they would say? It was like, roughly that,

as they were trying to jail Donald Trump. But they can't now. I mean, these people are all pardoned. Unless can they? Like, I don't know how legitimate is this to say, the preemptive pardon, I don't, it feels like it can't be, right? It does seem like it opens it up to also, it feels like the other side of that coin

is like that Tom Cruise movie, where you get, you know, like pre-crime, where you get hauled in. I feel like if you're pardoning people preemptively for a crime they didn't commit, it does open a gateway to convicting people preemptively of a crime they might commit. It feels very like, what's the other side of that? It feels very unsettling to me. I don't think it means it will happen. I think that just would be like an interesting sci-fi kind of future if it sounds cool. I think that's what you're going, you're like, well, let me just throw this in there.

How can we make this fucked up system even worse? I don't think that will happen. I think what will happen is this basically guarantees that every single president on exiting office sort of has to do this. I believe this was going to happen before even the pardons came. Once Trump was being chased down the way that he was,

in a matter that I felt was clearly politically motivated, and not just him, but his allies going down, like they were really trying to stop this person from running for president. It was obviously what happened. I think it's one of the reasons he won the election. It turned a lot of people against the state while this was happening. It was kind of horrifying to watch.

But it's not a genie you can put back in the bottle. Once you do that, politics becomes so completely bitter and hateful and warlike, that the other side is gonna want revenge. And once you commit revenge, the other side is gonna want revenge for your revenge. This is gonna happen year in and year out, I think for the rest of at least the next few decades, couple decades, there's lawfare is on the table.

People are going to use the court to go after their political enemies. If that's the case, then the risk of running for office is so high that the only way you could ever make it a compelling path for competent, good people is if you promise them that at the end of this journey, you and everyone you know will be protected from lawfare moving forward. So in this way, I'm almost not even mad about the pardons. I understand them, and I think that they should happen moving forward.

Like, I think that Trump should definitely do this to everybody he knows to protect them from working with him during his administration because there is very clearly real crazy risk there. When the left comes back into power, they are going to prosecute people around Trump for all sorts of made-up bullshit. And if the past is any indication,

they'll go to jail for it, as Steve Bannon did. I'm starting to think you're right. The law is fake. Yeah, the law is fake. It's made up. It's wizards casting spells from spell books. Yeah. It seems like country ending stuff though too. I thought we kind of prided ourselves

on not doing this banana republic kind of, it does feel like, all right, if I guess, I see your point from a practical, when Biden was doing this, my husband in particular was so furious because he's like, this is the stuff that ends countries. You know, like once you go down this direction, like you're saying, everybody is in a position

where that's their only choice to protect their loved ones, their family, in this direction, like you're saying, everybody is in a position where that's their only choice to protect their loved ones, their family, but then it creates banana republics and now you have people who are completely above the law and can essentially do whatever they want to do because they know they're gonna get a presidential pardon. So, that's not great either.

I mean, there's no other way to read it. They're like a separate class of person now in society. You have all of these people who are above the law, at least the federal law. Like there can be no prosecution. That's just wild. And like, if the president is pardoning people who did crime on his behalf,

like what if Richard Nixon had pardoned everybody around him during Watergate back then? I mean, he didn't, but he could have, I'm learning now. And if that is the case, then what you're effectively saying is a president can just do whatever he wants. And that is, at least when it comes to breaking the law. And it's interesting to see the left, because the left obviously was talking about that

when it came to the case, when it came to what Trump could be tried for and in the context of what he could be tried for. And that court case they always talk about that the left says means that Donald Trump is immune from law or whatever. That's not what happened. That's not true. That is not what the law decided. But what Biden did when he exited was say that. That's what he did say when he pardoned preemptively

every single person in his orbit who had heat on them for, in some of those cases, I don't know about all of them, I don't know them all well enough. I don't know what the fuck his family did or what he was afraid of them getting caught for. But certainly with Fauci, for example, like that man perjured himself. So he, and he would have been chased down

because the right is mad about what happened in the way that he lied relentlessly and got in the way of an investigation of the origins of COVID and things like this that have massive impact on our... Not only world, but like history forever. This affects... This will affect... The way that went down will shape everything

for our entire life. In a weird way, it kind of protects Trump with Fauci, because he was around during the beginning of the pandemic and was on board with Fauci. A lot of people like to forget that, but he was the person who was spearheading this in the beginning and he was like, you know, operation warp speed with the vaccines. And so in a weird way, it's probably good for him too. It's another 180, right?

All the vaccine stuff. Trump doesn't want that heat now, but it's like, yeah, he was the re he was taking credit for the vaccines four years ago. And now it's like, no one talks about the vaccines. Well, but then he had Sam talking about how they're going to have these super, super, super powerful mRNA vaccines and stuff that could cure cancer and whatever. Like the, wasn't that- Oh, was he? I didn't see that, the talk. So is he still, is he still into,

maybe, you know what? Time will tell. Trump will be ahead of the curve on all this. He's like, nope, he's, I'm standing by the mRNA vaccine. I got three, four, five myself. He's got the bra oligarchy. That was Larry Ellison at a press conference announcing Stargate, not, not Sam. Wasn't Sam there too? He was, but Larry Ellison, is that his name? The, the war program. Oh, Larry was talking about the mRNA. He was the one who said, yeah, like AI, he was talking about the potential. He was just basically like, you know, he was gassing people up about AI. He was like, I can do this, I can do that. And one of the things he mentioned was create mRNA cancer cures. Got it. Well, one wild for after all of this,

watching Biden, I mean, this is, we're talking on the heels of him awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to A. Clinton, um, and then George Soros, then pardoning all of the people in his orbit with tremendous power in Washington, pardoning them from all crime for the last ten years that they may or may not have committed. He then goes out, literally in his speech, and warns us of the oligarchy, the American oligarchy.

Um, I think that personally is wild. I think that our country has been led by the same, like, four or five families for decades. Like, decades. That's actually an oligarch. We just saw oligarchical behavior. I was reflecting back on that. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I've used the word oligarchy myself in my own writing about these people.

And, uh, and to see that applied to Trump, who comes in as a populist, who the oligarchy hates, who the main families hate, because he's surrounded by tech people, is interesting. You maybe could call that some kind of archie. It's like techno-archie or...

Technocracy. ...billion, yeah, technocracy, or what is it? Because they're billionaires. It's like, what's ruled by billionaires? I don't know what that is. It sounds interesting. I am a billionaire media mogul. Um, some people say, they're just so mad that they're not on their side. You know, that, that, I'm of two minds about it. Like I said, on dumpster fire,

they have a real opportunity to make changes, but if regular Americans lives are not improved, I mean middle-class and lower classes, all classes but regular Americans and that these people are just standing up there because they want to enrich themselves even further and get richer. If the money is continuously transferring upwards to the rich getting richer while everybody's else, everyone else's life has gets worse, which has been the case in the past four years, you're it's not going to matter. Like this coalition that they got to vote for them is going to turn on them to and maybe it won't matter because there will be some like, you know, it will be too

late, which is the dark timeline. Or, but the other mind of this is like the the left freaking out about this oligarchy and going, Oh, look at all of them with these people. And now it like you guys aren't populous. You you guys don't get to be mad because all of these people who are on your side forever suddenly aren't on your side anymore. And now you're gonna be screaming about some oligarchy when you're just sour grapes that they're not standing up with you and allowing you to censor all of your political opponents

and anyone who disagrees with you. They all, as you noted, and as they themselves, like as the right wing has noted all week, these people all not only voted for Democrats, they gave tons of money to Democrats and did everything they could to try and stop Trump and no one was complaining then. Not one of them was like, what about the Democratic oligarchy? Oh my God, evil billionaires who were, I mean, Bernie Sanders, he's, Bernie Sanders to his credit the man has never liked a billionaire. There's never been a billionaire that Bernie Sanders liked.

But the rest of those Democrats, they fucking loved a billionaire as long as he was paying them. And when Liz Warren sent a letter to Sam Altman, which was crazy, when I saw that man, she sends Sam Altman a letter that is sort of just, it is kind of saying,

I don't think it's really accusing him of a crime, but it's using this like accusatory language. It is noting that he is giving money to Donald Trump's inauguration fund. It is noting that OpenAI is very important. It is noting that many tech people have given money to Donald Trump's inauguration fund, and it asks a lot of questions,

like whether or not this is dangerous, and demands that he answer whether or not OpenAI has given money to Donald Trump. And he just publicly says, no, and also, don't remember getting one of these when I was giving money to Democrats. That is just straight up, all of these people gave money to them.

It was like, tech money, banking, media, Hollywood. There was complete alignment. We were living in a one-party state. Every single fount of power and wealth was on the side of the Democrats. And now, it's fragmented, just like our media ecosystem. And, um, they can't handle it because they don't know how to win right now

in a world where they don't control everything. And so they're... Go ahead. Sorry, they did this with social media too. It drives me crazy. They're like, oh, social media. In 2008, it was all about how Obama got the youth vote and he used social media. And now he's, he look at what a genius Obama was for, for going and using the internet to gather all the young votes and the Republicans are never gonna win an election again. And now it's all about the like, the bros who won the election and how the right wing has taken over

the whole entire internet ecosystem. It's like, you guys had no problem when Obama figured out how to do this. And now suddenly it's like, you guys had no problem when Obama figured out how to do this. And now suddenly it's like, and I mean, this kind of leads into TikTok a little bit. Yeah, we should talk about that and also just the AI stuff. Um, cause there have been, you know, there are these practical, they're not just five guys standing there for whatever many of them were standing on a dais in tech. They're not just five guys standing there, or whatever many there were standing on a dais in tech.

There are a lot of policies that are going to change that will have, they will advantage American tech, I think over European and well, there's no European tech, but it will advantage the companies over Chinese tech. And- You see that meme? Oh, but the one about AI. The AI meme.

Yeah, the AI. It's like two giant monsters. It's like Chinese Eye fighting American AI and then European AI is that like the like retarded goblin like drooling over blocks. Yeah, poor Europe, man. Poor sad Europe. Brandon, why don't you break down the AI stuff that happened? We were talking about it a little bit earlier, but curious how Trump got involved in this. But I think it's kind of his signal that he's going to do AI differently than Biden. But he actually

announced Stargate, which is a $500 billion joint initiative between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle. And basically, this initiative is going to build out data centers in the US. It's starting with $100 billion now. The first build out is already underway in Texas. And it's partnering with Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle, and Arm as well. So Trump announced that along with like those dudes, Larry Ellison, Sam Altman. And that's when Larry Ellison was like, you know, we're going to create mRNA cures for cancer. And the other thing that was on our radar this week was that Trump, on his first day in office, I think, repealed the Biden's AI executive order. And so I spent

a good amount of time, unfortunately, this morning looking at that executive order, it wasn't very fun. But I think that the thing to take away from that is that Biden's approach to AI was really safety oriented. Even the first paragraph of the EO, in almost every sentence, the word safety or safely or risk is in one of those and is in a sentence. So you can contrast that with Trump and I think Trump is what he's doing is he's embracing AI and he is not afraid of its potential or I think you saw a lot of fear in the Biden administration of AI and its potential. So at the very least we can say we have a different approach and that's probably good.

Molly, have you been following this stuff at all? Yes, I have and I have five points. Let's go. I have five points here. One, I'd like to see Masa's beautiful slides outlining this. I hope there's like a golden goose or some sort of rainbow.

Two, it's pretty obvious we're going to have to go nuclear and I think this is like a pretty good leap into this whole energy. Wait, what do you mean go nuclear? Well, like for energy, because we're going to need to power these data centers. Inference is like 10 times more cost and like compute intensive than just building out models. And so we effectively need like two times the amount of energy of today. So we're going to have to like build out nuclear facilities. And they did this already with Constellation and Three Mile Island. But like in California, we're going to have to probably extend the contracts on Diablo

Canyon, which Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley talk about a lot. Three, what is with the government projects and putting Gate in the name? Like, it just sounds kind of sketchy. The story gets cool. It does sound cool. We can revisit Stargate in a second. Sorry, get to four.

We can't. Four, Larry Ellison looks like absolutely incredible for 80 years old. And I know for a fact he's making Brian Johnson jealous. I don't know how he does it. And then five, I think this one's probably the most important because AI is easily the most important economic and technological advantage that we have for the US and its competitive advantage around the globe. And I think Trump is actually taking that very seriously, even if it's just phase one of building us out, because this is like

really like the modern day space age race. And so I think that's why there's so much of an emphasis on it. And then next to that, it's like you're compiling not only like US investment in this, but like masa is Japan. So we're getting like foreign allies involved. And there's like foreign involvement in this. And I don't even know if this is related. But Saudi just announced that they're going to allies involved and there's like foreign involvement in this. And I don't even know if this is related, but Saudi just announced that they're gonna be investing

600 billion into the US. So, like, all of a sudden, we're having... But Trump's dead. Trump was like, my friends in Saudi Arabia, they're gonna give us 600 million, they said, a billion. I think we're gonna round that up to one trillion just because we're really good friends. Saudi Arabia will be investing at least 600 billion dollars in America, but I'll be asking the

crown prince, who's a fantastic guy to round it out to around one trillion. I think they'll do that because we've been very good to them. I love that style of foreign policy where you're just like, this guy's going to give me $400 billion. And then I bet they're going to do it. Sorry, I need to cut you off. But it is an important note. Trump's trying to get more.

I'm well, it works for masa. He was to cut you off, but it is an important note. Trump's trying to get more. Well, it worked for Massa. He was like, you said 100 billion, let's double that. Let's make it 200 billion. And then Massa walked up to the stand and was like, you know, you said 200, but I'm gonna make it 500. So it was like a really funny dance. It was a compelling case that you made. Yeah.

One of the things I noticed looking at the Biden-O2, which again is now rescinded, is like the Democrats seem to treat AI not as an innovative technology, but as a way to spend more money. The EO is like just from 30,000 feet, like it's just a list of new ways to spend money and new departments to establish and new grants to give. And, um, again, like, you kind of don't... Like, that reading, it was, like, depressing. You know, it's like, oh, you know, like, they're just using it

to give money to their constituents and say... Um, and then using that as a sort of, as like a PR win of some sort. And, um, I just don't, I don't see that happening here with Trump, which is, again, it's nice to see. I felt that way when I first drafted. I wrote this piece for PirateWires called Trillion Dollar Paint Shop.

It was the first time I ever looked at one of these spending bills. It was the trillion dollar bill, which back then seemed really crazy. I guess now it's more common, but at that time, it was like, holy shit, like, what? A trillion dollar bill. And so, yeah, I looked through it and I was shocked at, it was an infrastructure bill and there was no new, really new infrastructure there. There was no like grand project. There was no, okay, we're gonna build the,

you know, the national highway system or it's like Apollo or something or the Manhattan product. There was nothing. It was just refurbishments and new departments and equity grants and shit like this down the list. And you could contrast that, I think, with the chips bill, which was also passed by Biden. However, as I did some reporting on that actually, and spoke to one of the people who first worked on drafting that bill. And that started under Trump. So that was actually a Trump era bill

that Biden gets all the credit for. And for some reason, Trump allows them to have it for the most part. That started with the Trump administration and also filled with pork and bullshit, was, it really was. I mean, I went through that one as well and I broke down where all the nonsense was. A lot of it, like half of it was just education,

like grants to random programs. But there was also, like, we're... There was a plan, the goal was we were building new chip hubs here, and we're building out chips independence from, really Taiwan is the problem there. Not, they're great, yay Taiwan, but they're not gonna be Taiwan forever. Let's be honest. So, we need some chips independence. And, um, and I like seeing that as well,

Brandon. I think just to echo you, I've noticed this for a while. I'm sure not every bill is going to be like that, but I love to see just something in a bill, like an actual goal that is funded. I'm curious to know what you guys think about this. So I wonder if Trump is almost perfectly positioned to do this heavy AI investment because he doesn't have to worry about running for reelection. So like, for example, there are a ton of way modes driving around outside my neighborhood right now. Let's say that turns into like truckers getting replaced with, you know,

autonomous or like at least us taking steps to replace truckers with autonomous vehicles, like at some point during Trump's term, you could see that coming back to hurt him at a Midwestern swing state. If Trump had to worry about running for reelection again, but because he doesn't have to, I wonder if he's almost perfectly poised to go, okay, I can go all in on AI, you can give me these big checks for my campaign.

It's a win-win for me and for the industry because I don't have to worry about any potential blowbacks of massive AI developments coming back to hurt me politically. I think he's almost perfectly positioned to do this. Bridget, it seems like you had a thought on that. No, I'm so normie on AI. I'm always just trying to learn and figure out because the H1B visa debate that kind of happened, as I was reading a lot from

both sides, like MAGA and from tech, it does seem like it's an, like you were saying, Molly, it's an arms race. And one we're currently not winning, actually, or one we're falling behind in. And we don't have- And not for energy either, even on nuclear. We are so far behind in nuclear energy. Right. Yeah, this is what's interesting to me is sometimes I feel like we'll get in the weeds

about these little things when it's really the people up top, Elon, people who are, um, who are privy to more national security stuff, they recognize that there are much bigger things at stake and they will affect my children, my children's children, the security of our country. And it all seems to have to do with who has the lead with AI and energy? I think Trump believes this. And to kind of answer your question, Riley, I don't think that Trump is saying, I just don't care about the jobs being replaced. I think he really cares about his legacy. I think, in fact, that's the only thing

that I feel confident saying he cares about. And that's the thing that I trust. That's the compass for me. That's when I decide on how I feel about him and his policies. I think to myself, like, does him having a great legacy benefit me potentially? And I think it has to. If he wants to go out being the greatest president that has ever existed

and everyone loving him, and for that to happen, he needs to make sure that he serves these people who love him. And that's not gonna happen by just letting wide- scale replacement take place. But he views government, or he views companies very differently than Democrats. He sees our tech companies and AI as a national asset. And you can see that in the difference

that you brought up, Brendan, in the language on Biden's talking about the bill. He's talking about safety and things like this. He's asking for safety from AI because he sees AI and tech companies by extension and all business by extension from that as a threat to government power. He sees them as another fount of power that can challenge the state. Trump sees them as the same thing. I think Trump sees companies in the way that like Xi Jinping sees companies. Xi sees them as a part of China. And that's why he's always advocating for them abroad.

And I think that with Europe had companies, that's how they would do it as well. That is how Trump's gonna move forward. He's gonna see, you know, Facebook, he's gonna see open AI as an American asset. And if they start doing something that is destructive to him and to what he will then believe is, you know, by the country by extension, that would be really just

speech laws, I think he's going to go after them. But if they don't, he's just going to try and help them because he thinks that that's going to improve everybody's life here. And I guess you could even make an argument about whether or not that's true. I happen, I think I lean yes, that it is true. But I do believe that he believes that.

And I think that's why he's doing what he's doing with these companies. Is that he thinks, if our companies are booming, then the economy is booming. And if the economy is booming, then all these people who couldn't afford groceries now can. And then they're gonna love me. And I'm gonna be written in the history books as really great.

That, by the way, probably not gonna happen. Like, I don't... It doesn't matter how good he is. He could be the greatest president in the world. If the history books are written by Dems, you have a tough uphill climb, my friend. Do we wanna talk about Stargate's name? Well, I just think it's so cool. I mean, who doesn't wanna go through a Stargate? Have you, I mean, you know about, you know the show Stargate's name? Well, I just think it's so cool. I mean, who doesn't want to go through Stargate?

Have you, I mean, you know about, you know, the show Stargate, right? Yeah, well, it's a movie first, by the way. I had to look it up. Actually. Wait, Molly, you haven't heard of it? Actually, no, I never heard of it. I had to look it up. I looked it up.

There's also like a CIA thing correlated to it. The premise of the movie is that they build a portal into the future or Another world is a parallel worlds. There's targets all throughout the not even parallel worlds there. There are star gates all throughout the universe I'm pretty sure it's the wormhole thing that like time travels. Okay, I don't think it's a time thing Put those 500500 billion to work. Test it out, Mike. The premise of Stargate, originally introduced in the 1994 film

and expanded through multiple TV series, revolves around the discovery and use of an ancient alien device called the Stargate, which allows instantaneous travel between distant planets. I was right. Thank you. These are all on planets throughout the universe. It's this ancient way of travel that we've lost touch with. And then we discover this artifact that we activate, and it's like, oh shit, the Stargate's active again.

And then they find all these alien worlds. But in their other world. Where do you think they're gonna put it? I think we should put it... It's gotta be in America somewhere. Obviously. Maybe the golden, it's the golden gate. It should be right up there.

It should be right up there in Marin. This like huge, beautiful star gate. Do you guys think chat GPT is better than Grok? Cause I use Grok more. Because Grok doesn't censor anything. You know, I have not, you know, I've not really, I've used Grok for some image generation that was kind of janky. Um, but weirdly my behavior is to just use ChatGPT.

I'll have to use Grok more and try. I guess my assumption was that Grok was more about like summarizing what was happening on X. Grok is good, dude. All right. I'm gonna give it, I'll use it more. I have to say, I stopped, I kind of stopped using chat GPT just because I would ask it a question or something.

And especially when you're trying to do something for like dumpster fire, where it's a little bit like subversive, it'd be like, we can't give you an answer to that because it's blah and I'm like, you know, I get the fuck out of here. I'm not, I don't need the nanny state in my... in AI. So now this is Sam Allman's weakness, is the safety language that pops up on chat GPT quite a lot. It... Elon is... I think, you know, obviously he's in this war with Sam publicly.

I think that if he pushes down on that enough, it will be a problem for Sam when it comes to like government, anything. So, it's something to think about. It's like the warnings you get before Disney movies now, the old Disney movies. My daughter was watching one and she's like, she's little. And she was like, what is this?

She's like, what's happening when one came on before Fantasia? And I was like, exactly. What's the problem with Fantasia? I don't know. And some. With Aladdin. I saw it for Aladdin. It was because the, from what I can tell, it was the dude, the, the like Arabian dude selling goods in his little stand was seen as racially insensitive.

They have it on Lady and the Tramp because of the cats, the Siamese cats. They have it on. Oh, we are Siamese. They have the Asian speak. Oh, no, Disney. No, it's not. It's not a lot. It's on a lot.

But that's what that reminds me of every time I go to search something or if I'm looking to to it's usually like generate a funny title for this episode. AI is great for that kind of like generate a clickable title for my YouTube video. But not if you're trying to be incendiary or you're trying to make a joke or something. It'll be like, we can't make comparisons to blah blah. It's just like, harmful language. That's safetyism. I hope we can leave that in the last decade. Yeah. I mean, it's important, I think, to always hammer down the fact that what they mean by safety is this. Censorship.

They mean censorship. And that's just, we can't be doing that in 2025, not in this economy. I do want to know though, and I don't think I'm gonna have time for TikTok with it today, and who cares? It's like, I'll get back to you. Oh, I'm so curious what you think about. I mean, I read your piece, but I'm so curious what you all think about. I think TikTok, so I have a family member

who's like been addicted to TikTok, and he's kind of in that age range of like teens. And I texted during the like 13 hours that it was down or 12 or whatever. And I was like, are you okay? And he was like, I'm not okay. I'm not doing all right. And I wonder how many people were the like fetal position on their floor, because they couldn't get their vicks. Riley, you're not on it. Molly, are you on it? I'm not on it. But I mean, I think it was like a great move strategically for Trump, like get it back on so everyone can watch him during inauguration, get like a short

duration window so he can like negotiate it. Um, the kids are on his side. He can figure out a way to like make money off of it, gain majority control, buy low, squeeze margins, make extra profit on it, save America, go off in the distance very happily. And here we are. We have TikTok again. I guess I just don't know... So, I... It's weird that I was talking about this and I was getting heat from't know... So, I... It's weirdly I was talking about this

and I was getting heat from people who were like, Trump changed his mind! And if you're not willing to say that he, he like lied about his TikTok stance for money, then I don't trust PirateWires anymore. And I was like, okay. Wow. Wow. Um, I've actually covered this story very closely.

Like, every twist and turn, I didn't realize how, I thought reasonably closely, and then I went back and I looked at Pirate Wire's coverage, and like, this is one of the things that I've covered more closely than anything. Every twist and turn of this story, I was writing about, and... Including the moment that Trump pivoted.

And he pivoted right after meeting with Jeffrey Yass, and Trump didn't, Trump was having money problems at the time. He did take money from Jeffrey Yass, and he did change his opinion on TikTok right around that time. And I criticized him for it, publicly. But, so, you know, Trump went after TikTok a long time ago. This is before Trump leaves office, he signs an executive order that is going to force TikTok

to divest within, I think, 90 days. Biden comes into office, kills the executive order. We have a bunch of stuff happening behind the scenes, some of which we know, I think the core thing, the main thing we don't know. There was eventually growing bipartisan consensus on the topic of TikTok as being actually a threat to America in terms of both spying and propaganda, though the spying is what they actually

use. The propaganda piece is what everyone's afraid of, but doesn't really, that's not the actual justification for forcing divestiture, though I think it's reasonable, to me it's reasonable, but it's not the actual reason, it's the spying. So bipartisan consensus grows. There's this backdoor meeting that happens where everything is revealed to Congress or to key people in Congress. And overnight, the bill is like, whoop, we're getting the fuck rid of this thing.

So there's some kind of national security risk there. Around this time is when Trump meets with Yass and changes his perspective on this. And then we don't hear about it for a long time until suddenly, even now, like up, like as the court was looking at the TikTok case, the clock is running out. They are, the company's forced to divest. If they don't divest, it shuts down. They're declining to divest. The reason they're declining to divest is because China won't allow them to divest. The Chinese government, which they're saying they're independent from and doesn't affect them at all,

is not allowing them to divest. That's the whole reason that they're even in this bind. And I think that at this point, like, you start to see more of Trump's reasoning, which I think is much more complex and interesting than it originally was and than it was when he pivoted. So he no longer needs Jeffrey Yass's money. He's already the president, first of all. Second, he's surrounded by tech oligarchs,

as we've been told relentlessly all week. He has unlimited money. Now, what are those tech oligarchs? They are actually, he has money from tech. Those people are all in competition with TikTok. So actually he has nothing but incentives to let this thing die and he doesn't do it. I think the reason has to do with what Elon said. Elon also pivots this week on the TikTok issue slightly. He says, you know, I was always opposed to it on free speech grounds.

However, there's this reciprocity thing. Like it does not make sense for us to allow all of their shit over here when all of our companies are banned in China. And that is just, I think somehow people don't realize this that literally every single American social media company is banned in China. Like you can go, you can just Wikipedia companies,

American tech companies that are banned in China. It's most of them are banned. So that's why all those guys were behind Trump. Sadly, it makes sense. Yes, exactly. And not only that, but also Europe. And you've been seeing this for over the past couple of years, European regulators have become way more aggressive with American tech companies and effectively just holding them ransom is how I've perceived this and written about this. They are just stealing money from them, robbing them blind. The Biden administration, not only did it not help, it actively helped foreign governments investigate our companies. And

this break with the Democratic Party was inevitable when you treat companies like this. When you see corporations in your own country, not as an asset, but as an enemy, this is going to happen. But on the TikTok stuff, I think what's happening now, that reciprocity comment from Elon signals to me that Trump and Elon have talked about this, that that is actually where the president's mind is. And he doesn't just want TikTok to have an American buyer, which doesn't make sense because why on earth would Chi say yes to it now

and not to it six months ago if nothing else is on the table? I think Trump is pushing for access to the Chinese market. I think it's gonna be much more aggressive. I think this is the first move in a much bigger trade war that will have to do with tech companies to a large extent, but other things as well. And this is just

Trump's opening part of the deal is what I feel. So would that be selling out American national security and or information to China in order to do this? I actually, so my only read of this is that he just does not believe that the threat is legitimate enough to matter. That's my, that is my read of it. I almost, I was gonna write it, but I was running out of words. I was already over words, but that is an important piece.

I'm glad you brought it up because for all of this to work on the deal making sense, he would have to just not agree with the fact that it's a national security risk, which, I mean, there are people who do agree. I mean, Acasio is one of them. She's saying like, she, for that back room deal, or not deal, that back room report

that I was talking about, she never saw it. So not everyone, she was like, if there was some secret thing that was said, we should see it so I can judge based on whatever. Maybe, my sense is it's gotta be, like I see TikTok as just like an unambiguous threat to the country. But I think it's hard to read it. It's either he... I don't think he needs the money.

So what is the other incentive there? I think that he just doesn't see it as a threat. I think that he's trying to make some bigger deal. Or maybe he thinks if you have majority American ownership, then it's no longer a threat somehow, but I don't think it works that way. And I don't know who's telling him that it works that way. And so, this is a law that now he's...

Yes....just ignoring? Well, that's the really crazy part, is that... It's like, he's just declining to enforce something that is unambiguously a law. Like, they are, TikTok is in operation right now illegally. Like, Trump's not actually a god, or, you know, a wizard who can wave his wand and be like, no, Trump's not actually a god or a wizard who can wave his wand and be like, no, it's no longer a law.

It was voted, the TikTok to Vestiture bill was voted, was voted in Congress. It was signed by the president. It then went to the Supreme Court, which upheld it. And it is just a law. It's like, it is absolutely a law that Trump is not enforcing, but he could enforce at any moment. And so, like, because all of those steps are already taken care of,

he actually does have this sort of king-like power, this dictator-like power over this one company. And so maybe that's also why he sees it no longer as a security threat, because the moment they do anything off, not above board, like he can just shut them down immediately. But certainly he has immense amount of leverage now over a really important asset to the CCP, which I mean, that's why this is such a big deal, is like, it's just very important to them. So, that's good.

Okay, stay tuned. We'll see, but in the meantime, the kids are pissed and they don't know what to do about it because daddy Trump is the one who saved their gyrating teen hooker videos. And, uh, like, what do you do with that? The cognitive dissonance, man, it's wild. They're giving us fentanyl and digital fentanyl. Yeah.

Yup. Yeah, they are. How to destroy a country. I think that was a part of his calculus too, in that global trade, like thinking of it, which you laid out in your piece on, I think also part of the calculus was if I save TikTok, then like already much has been made about Gen Z going more to Republicans. But I think a little bit of it was if I saved their app, maybe that shift continues even more the Gen Z shift to Republicans.

I think that was maybe a part of the calculus too. It seems like the, yeah, there are a lot of reasons that it, it helps him and that feels like one of them. But then I just saw all these TikToks of these people cry, screaming over immigration. So I can't imagine that they really give him much credit for, for saving their beloved drug app. I was like, it's going to be so funny when that's the next insurrection as the Tik Tokers like shuffle dancing to the Capitol. Oh man. I guess, I mean, you guys have any last thoughts on Tik Tok or questions or, I mean, did you survive?

How are you all doing for that brief? I've never downloaded that app. I don't even know, like, it's still active. That's what we're saying. It's still going on. Yeah, they brought it back. I'm just so far away from it. People woke up on Sunday morning and blocked.

I got those stories. I got friends' stories of them being very upset. Eight hours later, it was back. You still hear about it. We did get some really amazing moments. This is TikTok, man. They're so... They went out, they died as they lived.

Mistforming hundreds of millions of Americans. It was like straight up line one. We have been banned. You weren't banned, motherfucker. You were forced to divest and you refused to do so because your communist dictator abroad would not let you. The very one that you said you had nothing to do with. Um, so you were not banned, you were forced to divest,

you declined to do so. Uh, they did though, in the note, mention that it would come down to whether or not Trump would help them out, which was crazy to give that to... That was crazy, that was crazy. And then the next note was like, he helped us out, like he hooked a brother up, like, TikTok's good to go now. Thank you, Daddy Trump.

And it's like, that's what happens when the dictator now controls your app in this one dimension. You know, I was saying Trump's the dictator. And I think that it's in Trump's interest to use this as a bargaining chip for some broader strategy that we're gonna find out. I think about over the next probably year, we're gonna see a lot about this.

What did you think about Elon's Nazi salute? SHARA LAUGHS Does anyone, I wanna know, does anyone here, I wanna know, does anyone here think it was a troll? Who thinks it was an actual Nazi salute? Anyone here? I have no comment. I don't think, I think it was like...

I think he might have been going through a lot in his mind. I think it might have been like, he was gonna do this thing, and then he might have thought like, oh no, don't do this thing, because people are gonna think it's this thing. And then he was like, no, but I have free speech, and I should just do this thing. I think it might have been a really,

I could see complication happening in his mind, but I don't think it was a troll. I do not. So you think it was a Nazi salute? No, I don't think it was a Nazi salute or a troll. I think it was just, I think it was him saying, I love you, and it was weird and awkward, and that's... That's where I land on it, a Nazi salute? No, I don't think it was a Nazi salute or a troll. I think it was just, I think it was him saying, I love you. And it was weird and awkward. That's where I land on it. But I'm telling, and I thought most people, I don't know why I thought that I had a relative send me, she was like, I lost one of my oldest friends.

This is someone who she's known forever. And she said she sent me a picture of Elon's doing this Nazi salute. And then she said, in the text, it was never about the economy. And then that further down in their discussion, she's like, I'm selling my Tesla. And I was like, people like this actually exist in the wild. I thought it was a meme. But no, they really like, I can see the text wild. I thought it was a meme, but no, they really, like I can see the text message. I know this person, I'm like, oh my God, they're real. They're real people.

And then you had all these people who were like, Facebook, Meta, they made me follow Trump. And it's like, no idiot. You were just following the president of the United States Facebook, and it switched over to Trump, and they're all freaking out and they're like reporting it. It is. Facebook is wild. I heard Reddit's pretty wild right

now. I and then I don't I don't know. I thought I've worked with autistic kids and they're very awkward in their bodies. And I didn't I saw it out of context. I was just watching it before the whole thing. It didn't even occur to me like watching it. I was like, oh, that's, you know, like it literally didn't, I didn't even pause and go, that was weird. It was just watching it. And then when the thing came and you, when you clip it and everybody, it's, when you put it side by side with these other videos, you're like, how much of the mediation of it like actually forms the perception? Because I wonder what people would think if they were just watching it.

I don't understand the concept of like, I'm secretly a Nazi, but I'm only going to do the Nazi salute. I'm not going to actually tell you any Nazi things. Like, what is the point of that? What would be the reason if you are a Nazi? Let's just like think about it from the perspective of a secret Nazi. How does this advantage you in any way whatsoever? What is the reason? Nazis aren't secret about it though either. Most Nazis are very proud to announce that they're Nazis. That's like the whole thing. They're not hiding it usually.

They're usually not taking the side of the Indians in the H1B debate. They're usually not going abroad to hang out with Netanyahu after the October 7th attack. They're not wearing dog tags from like a whatever victim or whatever was going on. Like, man, I just don't. But then I was telling Riley earlier, I think Riley I was telling you about like, I like what if, cause we always hear about these secret Nazi salute. People are like, oh, that's a Nazi salute or like the okay sign and things like that. They're not the Nazi signal. They're just lying, they're dog whistling.

And I've been saying no for so many years, like, no, you're just fucking stupid and crazy. Like, of course it's not. And then I was like, they're starting to like gaslight me into really believe, I'm like, wait a minute, what is everyone a secret Nazi? Am I the only one that's not a secret Nazi?

Like, what if they are all Nazis and I'm just over here like an idiot, like, they're not Nazi, I'm not Nazi. That's what I said on Dr. Fire. I was like, it would be pretty funny if he was a Nazi and like somewhere Elon goes and opens a secret door and there's like all this Nazi regalia. I would feel very stupid if he was actually a Nazi.

But I don't think I really just like in the context of all of his like aggressively anti-Nazi behavior, my sense is the man is not a Nazi. And if you're saying that he is, you have a mental illness and or you're lying on purpose, which is what Kara Swisher was doing on her podcast this week. That podcast is funny to me because Scott Galloway, you could tell that he thinks that she's crazy, but has to be nice to her. And this is one of those contexts where he's like, yeah, I just, it wasn't a Nazi salute. Like, I really think it's like pretty crazy to say that. And Kara is, he said it in nicer ways than that. But Kara was like, I think it was a troll. I think he did it on purpose. And he just wanted us all to say, like, you shouldn't do Nazi salutes. And

like this, that was a roughly her argument. And Scott's like, nah, it's like, like, why would he do a Nazi salute? Like, that's a really big deal to do a Nazi salute. I don't think he was doing that. And she ends on this bizarre note, which is where I think a lot of the media people are. And it's why I want to just briefly mention it is she's like, yes, I agree with you, but I think that it's true. I think that it is a Nazi. I think that he is a Nazi troll. And she, you could see in that moment when she was talking that she was holding two totally disparate or totally opposite beliefs at the same time. One, that what she was saying was not true. And two, that he really was doing a Nazi salute. She really was arguing both at the exact same time.

And that is fascinating to me. It's like, she knows that it's not a Nazi salute, but she's still mad about it being a Nazi salute because I think that she's gratified in some way by her hatred of this person. It says, it like makes her feel good to be mad at him. And so she can't let it go. And so she holds both ideas at once.

And it's just really incoherent and a little bit frightening to think of like all the cultural influence that she's had for so long and she's like so damaged. There's, I've had these kinds of similar conversations where I will kind of interrogate the, it's like, do you think he's a Nazi? No, but that was a Nazi salute.

Like, well, okay, but this is the thing that, and this is why this was fundamentally one of the reasons that I got kind of pushed out of the left is intent matters. You know, you can't, so he either intentionally did this or it was an accident. There's no, and then the other argument is like, well, Elon's smart enough to know what a Nazi salute is. And I'm like, okay, but what if he's just an awkward autistic person in his body? And then they're like, he did

it twice to make sure the people in the back, you know, I watched the, I watched the John Stewart segment on it and they didn't cover it that deeply. And John did this. You know, I watched the John Stewart segment on it and they didn't cover it that deeply. And John did this, you know, typically sneaky John Stewart way of kind of saying that he did it without saying that he did it because, you know, you can be sued. So it was like tiptoeing right up to being like, oh, surely he knows what that means. That's awkward. And oh, he won't, well, at least he won't do it again. And then he does it again.

And they kind of just like leave it. But they left it enough that you can read between the lines and that he's kind of implying that he meant to do this. And you have a nation of people who have been primed for this by the Trump is literally Hitler rhetoric for eight years. And so they're ready. They're ready for this.

And we've seen the sign, the specific hand thing comes up all the time. Usually it like, we're like some kind of national convention where there's a huge crowd and politicians are like out like waving to the crowd. I remember Laura Ingraham had one famously where she did one that comes up, where there's a huge crowd and politicians are like, out like waving to the crowd. I remember Laura Ingraham had one famously where she did one that comes up,

but then they're all going viral or all the videos of Democrats who've done it as well. It's like this, it's fucking weird. Listen, I would not do it. I do know what a Nazi salute looks like. I do know about the Nazi salute discourse and I'm not doing like anything that even remotely whispers in the direction of a Heil Hitler on a stage where people are primed to like...

It would be funny if he was like, I love you guys, and he's like, oh shit, that looked like a Nazi salute. Like, oh, I love you. Oh, from the bottom of my heart, like in his head, it's just like him cascading, like a cascading, just like, oh fuck! But that's maybe why he did it twice. Like maybe he did register that people were gonna say that. He's like, well, like a cascading, just like, oh fuck. But that's maybe why he did it twice. Like maybe he did register that people were going

to say that. He's like, well, if I do it twice, people will know that I was just really clueless. Then he's like, from my heart. No, like no one would think I did it, you know, on purpose three times. It's just cascading panic. Like, oh fuck, that looked like a salute. Molly, is he a Nazi or is he a secret Nazi? He's not a Nazi. Enough with the nonsense. He's Nazi. He's Nazi.

Nazi. Riley, Nazi? Not a Nazi? I could see the troll argument because he did succeed in stealing some headlines. I mean, this could be a brilliantly calculated autistic move of something just questionable enough to get the media talking, but just innocent enough for most common sense people to be like, a calculated autistic move of, like, something just questionable enough to get the media talking, but, like, just innocent enough for most common sense people to be like, okay, he's probably not a Nazi. It could be, like, perfectly calculated. I could see that.

He did tweet about how he loves being a troll today, and I was like, damn it! Maybe he's just going. He made a bunch of German comments. Um... Well, those, like, dad jokes? Yeah, the dad, the dad, the German dad jokes. Mm-hmm.

I don't think it was. I think he's right now trying to decide probably like what makes him look less stupid, you know? But we'll see. Brandon, what do you think on Nazi Gate? ...part 55,263. I don't know. I'm kind of... I don't understand how we became so fixated on Nazis as a culture, frankly.

It's like a Nazi could be around every corner, but it's totally not true. I feel like it doesn't map to reality at all. It's one of the most delusional things or memes about our culture is we're so worried about Nazis. I might be wrong. I don't know. Probably a Jewish person might say something different or something. It's a massive, powerful weapon

that is tied not only to our fears, but to our greatest, like our highest selves. Because we associate ourselves with heroes and heroics, World War II heroics, we defeated Nazis. So like on the right where you love like American iconography and American nationalism and pride and things like this, there's a lot of anti-Nazi sentiment

because it says good things about us. And on the left, the Nazis were opposed to things that the left considers really core to their identity. A lot of them, I mean, also like racism and things like that. Like all of their big villains are associated with Nazis. So it works for everyone in the country. And it's very powerful, just automatically, and it's been overused at this point.

And it's kind of interesting that like, I've never been less affected by Nazi language at the exact moment that I've never seen more, like, there's like openly white nationalist people online. Like, I do see a lot of that. I don't think they have much power, but I definitely see them way more than I ever did before. Uh, it's really unfortunate, I think, with the left-handed of the word Nazi,

because it did matter, and that is a thing that we don't want to be, and, um, they just kind of beat it to death, and we've lost an important identifier. I think the more interesting body language moment is why Zuckerberg couldn't keep his eyes up around Lauren Sanchez. Like, buddy, come on.

I saw that video so quick. It was in a video for, in the still, it's like, yo, he's looking at her tits. That's crazy for him to be staring right at her rack in front of her heartbeat. And then you look at the video and he just was like turning around and someone just, I think, did I see the right video or did anyone see the video that maybe I'm wrong. I mean I think he just like his eyes glanced down. You know I think it's a normal reaction to see. Which he was wearing lingerie. That was a crazy outfit.

That was a crazy outfit to wear to an inauguration. He was like I'm not wearing a shirt today. Crazy. to an inauguration. You're just like, I'm not wearing a shirt today. You're like, honestly, you look great. But like my friend Mike said that, she looked like she was dressed for Nobu. And I was like, yeah, like that's not, that's not an inauguration outfit.

I mean, when you're the wife of a billionaire, and now I guess, now she's a billionaire, I guess you just do whatever you want to do, but I wouldn't have worn it. Megyn Kelly was like straight up saying she dressed like a hooker. It was just amazing. Megyn Kelly went, she seems like personally offended by that outfit. That was pretty rough.

The, what, what did the, the Megyn Kelly's commentary or the shirt? Megyn Kelly's commentary was very aggressive. It was very aggressive. Yeah, she was like, this is like... She was as if she saw the decline of America in a single bra. It was like, this is what I'm mad about right now. I mean, someone has to police the girls' dress code,

I guess. I mean, couldn't be me. I thought she... Like I said. If we're gonna talk about the fun meme moments, I think the other ones that were really good were, uh, like, move to the side, the salute. Uh, the thumbs up after the Mars thing was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. Like, the whole room was cracking up. And then, did you guys see Barron's whisper to Biden?

Like, was that real? I did. It's fake news. I think it's been community noted, actually. I think it was like deceptively edited so that the community note said that this is a strange angle. He's actually talking to Kamala. And just from the angle, it looks like he said something to Biden and then Biden

just like was crushed by it, which is obviously we all want to believe that, but I do feel like it's gone around that that was not, that's like that angle of the video, but I could be wrong. I'm just- That means if that's true, then that means that Biden was staring off into the distance and then totally changed his view and like looked down, which is believable. We know it's like, okay, it was fake news. That is definitely what happened. Bridget, what were you about to say a second ago? We got to wrap this episode up.

Oh, I'm done. I love you guys. This was really fun. Well, last thoughts, anyone? Well, I mean, it's going to be a fun four years. Yeah. I mean, the runaway train has left the building. We'll see if any of you have been deported by next week.

I'm keeping my eye out. If I find out any one of you motherfuckers doesn't belong here, I'm calling ICE. Or just like the anti DEI task force. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the anti-DEI task force. Yeah, yeah. They're actually, it's like Trump's next executive order is like there will be no diversity. That's like, and then suddenly things get dark,

you're like, wait a minute. They are Nazis. It was always in front of us, the Nazi salute, it's like, it all comes together, like the montage and the third act of a movie, and I'm like, no, I'm on the wrong side. But for now, I'm not. And we're gonna keep making fun of all the dumb stuff and talking about all the really important things,

but not anymore today, because the episode is over. It's been real. Please subscribe. Please go check out Bridget's podcast, which is fucking awesome. And she's awesome. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Molly, Brandon and Riley. You have no choice. It's been real touch grass. Have a great weekend. See you guys next week.